Le Revenant
by wujy
Summary: Oliver Wood is a detective in the film noir-style fanfiction. Cho Chang has come to seek his services. Can he solve the mystery of her husband's murder and stay alive in the process?


A/N: Quidditch League Fanfiction Finals Round One

Prompts: thunderstorm (atmosphere); Paris (setting); embrace (word)

This is written in film noir style. Listening to film noir music while reading this actually enhances the experience. lol

Word Count: 2,998 (Sorry.)

* * *

 _Le Revenant_

* * *

It was a day like any other. I was at my desk, digging through a stack of paperwork on a case that had been stumping me for weeks. A high-end box job downtown had dusted a twenty thousand dollar payout in loose diamonds and the busters in blue hadn't made a single collar. I'd had my eyes on some lowlife mug called Tommy who'd done a three-spot at county for popping safes a few years back, but I didn't have anything solid on him.

I was elbows-deep in the job; couldn't see past the end of my own nose unless I was looking at those files. I might not have even noticed the knock at my door if it hadn't been for the silhouette that had come with it. Outlined on the other side of the dark glass was the figure of a dame, tall and stacked. Stacked like a crooked card game.

She waited a beat, then opened the door and stepped out of the hallway and into my life. She had a face like a China doll, porcelain white, with lips like rose petals, and her hair was a waterfall of midnight, sculpted into perfect fingerwaves.

As she swayed her way to my desk, I could tell she'd been crying. Her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were fever-blush pink in the way a moll gets when she's been up all night over some deadbeat that done her wrong. I'd worked enough jobs tracking husbands who'd strayed from the nest to know the signs.

"You Olly Wood?" she asked. Her voice was like someone pouring honey in my ear.

"That's the name on the door," I answered.

"I heard you were a reliable johnny," she said. "That true?"

I leaned back in my chair to get a better look at her. It was becoming obvious this China doll was in some kind of trouble, and I wasn't sure I wanted a share of it.

"Depends who you ask," I told her.

"Listen up," she said, putting her left hand on my desk, "I ain't got the time to do a crossword with you, Wood. Are you gonna help me or not?"

Maybe it was the look in her eyes when she read me the riot. Maybe it was the way that black dress of hers hugged every curve. Maybe it was the sixteen carats of South American ice on her ring finger. Whatever it was, it convinced me there was something worthwhile in helping out the chickie that was chirping in my ear.

"Why don't you have a seat? Tell me everything."

She told me her name was Cho and that she'd buried her husband a week back. Diggory, she said his name was. Cedric. I knew the name.

In my line of work, you rub elbows with all sorts—most of 'em lowlifes—but this cat, Cedric, was as white as they came. Diggory was a suit, and a lawyer at that, but not the sort of dead fish you see clinging to ambulance doors. He was a prosecutor for the state, and he had a reputation for going toe-to-toe with the sorts of sharks who defended dirty corporations, button men, and the mob.

According to her, her dearly departed had pushed one envelop too many and the mob had settled their score with him in true family style. According to the cops, it was an open-and-shut mugging with a slice of homicide, and some pocket-jingler they called Frankie Five-Fingers was already taking the heat for it.

According to me, there wasn't anything about this wet job that stank like mafia beef, and I told her so.

"Mob wouldn't whack a guy messy like this," I said. "A right guy like your husband gets under the family's skin, they're gonna take him out and make sure everyone knows who did him. They make an example. And they don't play cards with jokers like the rat bastard that got busted with the smoking gun. The mob's got high-class hitters on their payroll, and Frankie Five-Fingers ain't good enough to scrape off their Italian leather."

"Take a look outta your window, gumshoe," she said. "I'll bet you a bank-fresh note you see the boiler that's been following me the last two days. Black and mean-looking."

I didn't move for a second, trying to figure whether she was playing me or not, but I was too curious not to look. I wasn't sure when it had started raining, but it was coming down in buckets, and it was too dark to see to the street from two stories up. I was about to turn back when a thunderclap rattled the glass in its frame and the street lit up like Rockefeller Plaza at New Year's for a split second.

I made the car in the dark; it was a '48 Tucker, and tough, like she'd said. Not a lot of cats could afford a rig like that in a city like this. Luckily, I knew just where to find a few.

I sent the China doll back home and told her to get some rest. The Tucker went when she did, but I wasn't worried about anyone dusting her. If she was right about who was keeping their peepers on her, then she'd be six feet under, wearing a wooden kimono if that's what they wanted. Like as not, they were keeping tabs until the heat had died down.

I flagged a hackie and told him to make tracks for _La Salle Commune_. The _Salle_ was a jazz club—and probably a creep joint where you could buy some time in the embrace of a professional skirt—and it was my best bet for sniffing out the grift. It was still daylight when I got there, and the joint was empty except the barkeep, but that was just the man I wanted to see.

His name was Snape, and he knew the ins and outs. If anyone could finger the Tucker's driver, is was this cat.

Snape was wiping down the bar when I walked in, and even though he didn't look up, I knew he knew I was there. He didn't miss a trick.

Sure enough, before I could get two steps into the club, he said, "You look like a dog with a bone, Wood. I take it you ain't here for the Jim."

"'Fraid not," I said. "I'm looking for a tin can and the yup who drives it. Anyone around you know's got a '48 Tucker, black?"

The hand wiping the bar froze in place and Snape stared at it without answering, so I knew right away that something about Cho's story had been on the level. Someone big was behind all this, and Snape knew it. I was about to start squeezing him for the skinny, but a voice behind me took the lead.

"Tough neighborhood to be asking tough questions."

I turned and locked eyes with the _Salle_ 's head honey, Bella, looking cut to order in a little red number that didn't leave me wondering about much. She ran the place when the owner wasn't around, and managed the good-time girls if you believed the schoolyard babble. She was the club's headliner, too, and I'd seen her perform a few times in the past. She knew how to drive 'em crazy.

"Heya, Stranger," I said, using her stage name.

"Hey, yourself."

Behind me, Snape went back to cleaning up before the all-nighters started rolling in.

"Sounds like you might know something about the boiler I'm chasing," I said. I could tell she was holding onto something, but I wasn't sure what it would take for her to spill.

Slow as molasses, she crossed the club. "Maybe I do," she said.

She was playing hard to get, but I wasn't in the mood for games.

"You want to let me in," I asked her, "or are we gonna bump gums all night?"

She flashed her pearly whites at me and stepped in close. I could help but feel a lot hot under the collar, but I wasn't going to show it to her.

"Doesn't sound to me like you came to _bump gums_ , detective," she said. She wasn't talking about having a conversation. "Sounds like you came looking for trouble."

"I can handle myself, dollface. Dump, if you've got the goods, or take a powder. I'm working tonight."

She pouted at my rough words, but I knew it was all an act. Nothing got under Bella's skin that she didn't want there or put there herself. She was the sort of hot stuff that drove men crazy, but nothing ever touched her. She was a mafia moll, and it was no secret whose shoes she unlaced at the end of the day. _Le Revenant_ was a wrong number straight out of the _milieu_ —Parisian mafia—and he'd been running this part of Chicago ever since.

"I could tell you, gumshoe," she said, running a hand up my stomach to my chest, "but I'd be sleepin' with fishes as sure as you if dropped that note. You know better than anyone."

I grabbed her by the wrist suddenly, and she flinched. "If you need an out, Stranger," I told her, "this could be your big break. If your guy's got his mitts in this, you could help me put him up. I bet taking over the _Salle_ would be a nice consolation for having your old man under glass for twenty-five to life."

Bella tried to pull her arm free, but I didn't let her go. She was finally starting to show some emotion over that mask she always wore.

"Whadda _you_ know?" she asked, looking scared and angry. "You're just a johnny with a license to stick your nose where it don't belong. You think you know me or my guy? You don't know a damn thing!"

"You're right," I told her, "and I'm about half-sick of being the only one not in the know, so are you gonna sing, or do I have to get rough?"

I didn't want to hurt her, but I squeezed her wrist enough to show I meant business.

"Let go of me, you lug!" she shouted, pounding her free hand against my chest. I could tell she was about to bust, so I let her go.

She held her wrist in the other hand and stared at the floor for a minute. Then, she started talking.

"He wasn't always like he is now," she said, so quiet I could barely hear her. "When we met... It was like _fireworks_."

* * *

Flashback - _Paris, Two Years Ago_

* * *

 _"I didn't speak a lick of French, but all I wanted was to be like the glamorous French models in magazines, so I dropped my nest-egg on a boat outta this black-and-white life bound for the City of Lights. I was fresh as a babe stepping onto that dock, with dreams and ambitions and hope. It wasn't long before I realized I'd just changed the gutter I knew for one I didn't. Inside a week, I was flat broke, but it was too late to back out. I picked up every odd job I could find, but nothing paid enough to feed me, let alone ship me back home. I did a lot of things I'm still not proud of with the lowest scum the human race has to offer._

 _"That's when I met_ him. _He was a New York kid, just like me, but he'd flown that coop a long time ago. He wasn't like the tomcats and pugs who came out at night to chisel their way into your bed and leave before their belts are even buckled._ He _was a_ man _,_ _and he knew how to make a woman feel like a woman and not side dish. He got me outta the joy-house and off the streets. Bought me clothes and swag and put me up in an apartment of my own. We got married in a Parisian chateau two months later._

 _"He was everything a right guy ought to be 'til he took two to the chest in a deal gone wrong. He snuffed on the table twice, but they brought him back to me."_

* * *

End of Flashback

* * *

"He brought me here to Chicago not long after that," she said, starting to shake, "and that's when he started to change. It was like, with the City of Lights in the rearview, everything started getting... _darker._ Started calling himself _Le Revenant_. The man who came back from the dead."

I put my hand under her chin and made her look me in the eyes. "You know I can help you, kitten, but you gotta play ball with me. Tell me. Did the _Revenant_ whack Diggory and put a tail on his widow?"

She didn't answer at first, like she was trying to figure whether it was worth the risk. She brushed my hand away and turned back toward the stairs she'd come down earlier. I thought for a second that I'd pushed her too far, but she stopped and looked over her shoulder at me.

"The _Revenant'_ s your collar, Wood. No bones. Snape'll get you the address, but you better hurry. That chippie you're chasing's probably in deep."

She swept up the stairs, then, and I turned to the barkeep who had set out a glass two-fingers deep of the amber stuff. I crammed it, and he handed me a napkin with an address on it, then went back to his business like nothing had happened. I could tell I'd blown my welcome, and I had a bad feeling my night was getting an easier, so I dusted off and grabbed a cab.

The address on the napkin belonged to a townhome just outside the edges of a clean cop's jurisdiction, and I clocked the Tucker parked outside first off. So, I was in the right place. I walked past the Tucker and up the stoop to the front door, but something was wrong. If the Tucker was here, then where was the China doll?

The door opened before I could even lift my hand to knock, and a stuffed shirt waved me in to a room that looked like it ought to be in a museum. Jeeves was gone when I turned around, but a voice near the fireplace reminded me why I was there in the first place.

"Lose your way detective?"

The _Revenant_ was standing by the fire, drinking something dark out of a tumbler. My jaw hit the floor when I made him.

It was Tommy Riddle, the deadbeat I figured for the jewel heist I'd been working. _This_ was the _Revenant_?

I shook myself; I knew I didn't have time to rehash old conversations, so I cut right to the meat.

"Where the girl, Tommy?"

Tommy smiled at me like a snake smiles at a mouse.

"Upstairs," he said. He wasn't evening denying that he had her. I had to hand it to him; he had brass ones.

"I'm curious, though, what your end game is, johnny. You're here, in my house, with no backup, no plan, and no gun."

No gun?

I reached under my coat for my roscoe, but the holster was empty.

"Looking for something, slick?"

I turned to see Bella standing in the doorway, my own heater pointed right at me.

"She's really quite the charming little thing, isn't she?" Tommy asked, and Bella blew him a kiss with her free hand. "I'd be lost without her."

"Nothing to gain from shooting a detective, Tommy," I said, not showing my back to the kid with the bean-shooter. "Just give up the girl and we'll dust. Never see our faces again."

"Why would I do that when you've already done me the favor of showing up unarmed? My only two loose ends in one basket, Wood. You're really too kind."

"Goodnight, detective," Bella said, and then squeezed the trigger. The gat went off and I hit the ground, sure I was dead. Pain, hot and heavy, spread across my chest and down my arm, and all the lights in Chicago went out.

When I woke up, the China doll was staring down at me from above, and I thought for a second I really had been rubbed out and gone to heaven. Then, I realized I was in a hospital bed with my arm in a sling.

"You still breathing, gumshoe?" she asked in the angel-voice of hers.

I started to answer, coughed, tried again.

"Better than before," I said, "now that I got extra holes to breath from."

"You could have died," she said, "if the busters hadn't shown up at the end and clapped that skeez-o and his crazy moll in steel bracelets. How'd you know it was a trap?"

I pulled a beat-up looking napkin from my pocket and handed it over to her.

"I don't understand," she said, looking at the address Snape had given me to Tommy's place.

I reached over and flipped the napkin over. On the back, in the barkeep's clean handwriting was written a single word: TRAP.

"Friends in low places," I told her. "Friends in low places."

 _Fin._


End file.
